


Gods and Men and Gods Again

by ThirtySixSaveFiles



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, M/M, Reincarnation, implied cannibalism at one point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 05:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10802361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirtySixSaveFiles/pseuds/ThirtySixSaveFiles
Summary: His name has meantthe sun, and it has meantwar, and it has meantgodfather, but the name that means the most might just beJack.





	Gods and Men and Gods Again

**Author's Note:**

> This grew out of [a conversation on tumblr](http://thirtysixsavefiles.tumblr.com/tagged/gods+and+men+and+gods+again), and I especially want to thank [Vulpining](http://vulpining.tumblr.com), [TonberryQueen](http://tonberryqueen.tumblr.com), [NearlySkeletons](http://nearlyskeletons.tumblr.com), and [HyperionCompanyMan](http://hyperioncompanyman.tumblr.com) for helping form what this turned into, and [Jill](http://jilldrawblog.tumblr.com) for reading and cheerleading along the way.
> 
> This is only one of many, many directions this story could have gone.

In the early ages his name means _the sun_ , and his altars run red with the blood of sacrifice. He drinks it in, the blood and the fervor and the _worship_ , and it is good. But there’s something missing.

A thousand years later his name means _war_ , and his altars are battlefields, and they still run red. He walks among his worshipers as they hack and slash and tear each other apart and he breathes in the stench of blood and death and he smiles. He lingers in the rooms where his priests - although they do not think of themselves as such, but he knows their hearts and he knows them for the war dogs that they are - move pieces across maps, move armies in the field, move men’s hearts to violence with word and deed. He soaks in the _fear_ and _determination_ and it is good, but there’s something missing.

The centuries fly by and his name is meaningless except for the fear it inspires, and most call him _godfather_ instead. There are fewer like him now; they have faded with the passage of time, clinging to what once was, and their temples lie in ruins. Not him. His empire stretches across cities, his temples are the streets and the alleys and the back restaurant rooms his acolytes meet in to do business. His name ricochets from mouth to ear, building velocity with each repetition. He can feel the eddies he creates as he walks down the streets, pulling the threads of the city taut around him, and it is good, but there’s _still_ something missing.

Another turn of the century, another _millennium_ marked down, and his name is Jack, and he owns a business empire, a little more legitimate than the last - on the face of it, at least. His temples are board rooms and the stock trading floor, and the bloodspill is more metaphorical but no less vicious. He spends his days putting the fear of him into employees, giving press conferences about creating jobs - _creating jobs_ is the new call to worship, they’ll follow anyone who says they can _create jobs_ \- and spreading his image through newspapers and magazines and the internet so no one except the most remote jungle tribes can say they don’t know it.

Jack waves to the paparazzi as he steps into the waiting car, bathing in the glow of flashbulbs and the worry of his security team. He settles into the back seat as the door closes, savoring the swirl of emotion all centered on him, and smiles.

Life is good. It’s only missing one thing. 

* * *

 The kid’s kisses taste sweet, like the kind of honeyed wine Jack vaguely remembers from centuries ago on another continent. He’s almost embarrassingly eager, draped over Jack’s lap, swaying to the beat pounding through the club. It’s the kind of place Jack makes sure he’s caught in periodically - exclusive, expensive, and not so dim that a decent camera phone can’t pick up his face. He’s here to be seen, after all - and to drink in the attention of the occasional eager young thing that can’t believe their luck.

Jack can hardly believe _his_ luck, tonight.

Jack pushes gently on the kid’s chest, and he pulls back reluctantly, pupils blown wide and lips swollen. It’s a good look on him, and Jack grins, sliding his hand up to thumb at the kid’s bottom lip.

“What’s your name, kiddo?” He always asks, and the name is always different even as the eyes give him the same answer.

“Rhys, sir,” the kid breathes, and something about the way he says _sir_ gives Jack pause. He eyes the way Rhys is staring at him - wide eyed and worshipful, which is welcome but a bit unusual in this day and age - and takes a shot in the dark.

“Do you - do you work for me?” Even in the shifting light the blush spreading across Rhys’ cheeks is clearly apparent.

“I - no.” Jack blinks, because that wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “I quit. This morning.”

“Hmm.” Jack leans up and ghosts his lips along the kid’s - against _Rhys’_ jawline, savoring the tremble that wrings out of him. “I hope it wasn’t your CEO that that made you leave,” Jack murmurs into Rhys’ ear, and the stifled whimper he gets when he bites down on the lobe is everything Jack remembers.

“ _Nngh-_ no.” Jack grins into Rhys’ neck at the half-moaned answer. It’s probably better this way. Fucking an employee is always a risk - scandal follows that kind of things these days, but there’s nothing quite like the worshipful attention of one of your own, and anyway Jack’s a firm believer in “no bad publicity.”

But Rhys’ reasons for leaving don’t seem to center around Jack, not if the way he’s rolling his hips against Jack’s stomach is any indication, and that kind of single-minded intention is headier than any liquor. Jack sets his hands on Rhys’ thighs and the kid stills under his touch. Jack has missed that eager obedience.

“Come home with me,” he murmurs against the kid’s lips, and the answering _yes_ sounds like a prayer, like a benediction. 

* * *

The first time Jack met Rhys neither of them wore those names. He had still been new to himself, to his _true_ self; he may have been born of mortal woman but he had always known that he was _more_. The truth sung in his blood, in his bones, and when the village priests had called down vengeance upon him he had laughed in their faces.

The heart of their champion had been sweet, like an overripe fruit. Jack remembers it fondly.

Sweeter still had been the temples erected in his honor, the chanting that had lifted his name to the heavens, the _faith_ that fed and sustained him in a way that mere food never had. The rest of the world had come to see what he had always known, and the others who called themselves gods had grumbled but made room. The humans averted their eyes as he passed and it made him strong.

All except one.

One young man watched him with not only awe and worship - which was his due - but also _hunger_ , and he had taken to Jack’s touch like he needed it, like he craved it

“I’m going to be like you one day,” he had told Jack one time, still panting in the afterglow. Jack had chuckled and slid a hand over the kid’s hip, pulling him close.

“I tore the heart of my predecessor from his chest,” he had said, amused. “Should I be worried?” He hadn’t waited for an answer; pursuing those soft lips with his own had seemed much more important.

Later, of course, Jack would wonder if he shouldn’t have waited. Maybe the kid hadn’t been strong enough, he had thought as they buried the body with the ceremony due a god’s beloved. The cut on his wrist had healed as if it had never been, but he rubbed it anyway, wondering where he had gone wrong.

* * *

Jack wakes up to find Rhys already awake, watching him with a faint frown. Jack reaches up to smooth away the line between Rhys’ brows, and Rhys catches his hand, turning his gaze to Jack’s wrist. He rubs his thumb over the place where Jack would have scarred, had he been capable of it, eyes distant as if trying to puzzle something out.

Jack’s breath catches. Rhys has never remembered this fast, before.

Jack’s not ready to give him up again so quickly, though, so he pulls him down into a kiss. Rhys appears to be willing to be distracted, humming into Jack’s mouth and letting Jack roll them over so he’s caged beneath Jack’s body. Jack kisses Rhys slowly, deeply, drinking him in against the time he’ll be forced to let go.

* * *

It had been centuries before Jack had found him again. Another port city, another stop on a long journey - the world was changing and he intended to change with it. He had seen what had happened to the others like him, clinging to an old way of life that was becoming less relevant every day, whispery ghosts haunting their own temples. Fuck that. The others had grown fat and  complacent on the belief of their following; Jack had always believed in himself, more than anything.

Humans never stopped believing - they couldn’t help it - but when the tides of belief shifted Jack had no intention of being left high and dry.

He’d been halted though, by a familiar face in a foreign crowd, a young man wandering the docks with a bag over his shoulder. His clothes were different and his hair was longer and the last time Jack had seen that face it had been shuttered in death, but here he was, shouldering his way through the crowd with an impatient expression. His right arm had been missing. Jack had wondered what had happened there.

He never found out - he had stepped aside and the young man had carried on past him with no sign of recognition. When Jack had turned to watch his retreating back, the kid had turned to glance over his shoulder, brow furrowed as if trying to remember something, and Jack had held his breath, waiting -

Then a burly sailor with a bucket of fish on his shoulder had passed between them, and when Jack could see again the kid was gone, swallowed up by the crowd. Jack never found him again in that lifetime.

It kept happening, though - years would pass and then a familiar face would resolve out of the crowd, as fresh-faced as Jack remembered it, and Jack learned quickly not to let these opportunities pass by. Sometimes Jack got to keep him for months, sometimes for a year or three, once for only a handful of days. Popular legend attributed the fire that followed that one to a cow and an oil lamp, and for once Jack had let rumor fly uncorrected.

* * *

Jack turns back from the coffee-maker to find Rhys staring at him, drumming the fingers of his metal hand on the table. He’s freshly showered, but that just makes Jack want to drag him back to the bedroom and wreck him all over again, to keep him against the time when Rhys will ask him again.

“You know,” Rhys starts as Jack pulls cream from the refrigerator, “I thought that I wanted to work at Hyperion because it’s the best. But that’s not why I applied there, is it?”

It probably isn’t. “Hyperion _is_ the best, babe, I won’t hear anything against it.” Jack’s going to keep up the facade as long as he can, although as far as he’s concerned this conversation is rapidly going downhill.

“Yeah. Yeah, no - I think I applied there because of _you._ ”

Jack sets a mug down in front of Rhys, who picks it up and takes a sip. Jack had forgotten to ask how Rhys takes it - _cream but no sugar_ \- but Rhys doesn’t appear to notice, eyes fixed on Jack.

“I _am_ pretty incredible,” Jack tries, preening. “Make sure to tell your friends that, ok?”

“That’s not what I mean and I think you know it,” Rhys says quietly. Jack sighs, and takes the corner seat at the table. Rhys picks up Jack’s wrist and turns it over, thumb drawing a line down the inside.

“This is where you slit your wrist for me and let me drink,” Rhys says, and Jack’s heart plummets. It’s too soon - it’s _too fucking soon_ , he’s not ready to give this up. Not again. “It didn’t work.”

“It never works,” Jack snaps. He tries to jerk his wrist back but Rhys holds fast, and his grip is much stronger than it should be. “It never works, so _don’t ask_ .” _Don’t ask because I’ll say yes_.

Rhys hums to himself. “No,” he says finally. “I can see that it doesn’t.” He chuckles a bit as if that is _at all_ fucking funny, but the irritation is a far second to the hope rising in Jack’s breast. Maybe this time - maybe they’ll have some _time_ together this time around. Jack can walk through fire and endure the ages but _this_ \- this is the one trick he’s never managed, to get Rhys to _stay_.

“I never told you why I left Hyperion,” Rhys says, getting up. His fingers catch on Jack’s for a moment. “I never felt like I fit in there, not really. I wanted to be there, more than anything, but I think that was because of you.” He crosses to Jack’s kitchen, toward the fine butcher block with the knives Jack never uses. “It was like an itch, you know? Something under the skin.” He tosses a half smile over his shoulder as he draw a knife out of the block. “Or in the blood.”

Jack starts to his feet but Rhys is already pressing the knife to his wrist, dragging the point up as the flesh parts behind it -

\- and seals again with no mark to show it had ever been cut.

Jack looks up to see Rhys grinning at him, knife held loosely in his metal hand, wrist bloodied but not _bleeding_. He crosses the space between them in a few strides, and when he carefully wipes the blood away with a dishtowel the skin underneath is pure and unmarked.

“Three days ago I took a position at Atlas Corporation,” Rhys says, and Jack blinks before he remembers what they were talking about. “Two days ago I cut myself by accident and healed before I could even put pressure on it. Yesterday I quit my job at Hyperion, and this morning I _remembered_ you.”

“I think we’ve been going about this all wrong,” Rhys says as Jack stares. “I don’t think it was ever supposed to be you that made me this way - I think I had to get here on my own. Sorry,” he adds, shrugging helplessly, with the stupidest, _goofiest_ grin on his face, and Jack doesn’t even know what to say to that. Instead he jerks Rhys close and kisses him, and now that he’s looking for it he can _taste_ it - the cool breath of power is nothing like Jack’s own, and maybe that’s why he didn’t see it last night.

Rhys hums into his mouth and this time it _tingles_ , and if Jack let things like regret weigh him down - but he doesn’t. Regret is for people who don’t have forever, and they _do_.

Finally, they do.

* * *

Rhys keeps the name - he remembers others, now, but he’s answered to this one for over a quarter-century, and he likes it. Jack likes it too, likes the sound of it on his lips, murmured into Rhys’ hair or his neck. Like a prayer; like a benediction.

Atlas rises. How can it not, with Rhys at the helm; and he _does_ take the helm after only a few years, climbing the corporate ladder with an acumen that seems to outstrip his years. Jack enjoys the competition. By day he spars with Rhys in the boardroom and on the stock trading floor, and by night he teaches Rhys how to breathe in the hopes and dreams of his followers, growing by the day as Atlas’ star rises. Rhys takes to it like a natural, like he was born to do it.

Jack doesn’t frequent the clubs as often; or if he does it’s not alone.

It’s a brave new world, Jack thinks as Rhys curls up sleepily against him. There are few enough left like them; there may be _no one_ like what Jack is, what Rhys is. Jack breathes in against Rhys’ hair, soaks in the scent of a newborn power, and it is good, it is complete.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at [ThirtySixSaveFiles](http://thirtysixsavefiles.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!


End file.
